https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/467992-pe-2314
This time around we get just a little weird from time to time, with tracks from Captain Beefheart and the Elastik Band popping up when you least expect them (unless, of course, you've read the playlist already). The weirdest part of the show, however, is our Advanced Psych segment featuring Vertacyn Arc Materializer and the Residents and, making his/their Stuck in the Psychedelic Era debut, Zim.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Sweet Young Thing
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Uptown)
Year: 1967
There is actually very little on vinyl that captures the flavor of how the Chocolate Watchband actually sounded when left to their own devices, as most of their recorded work was heavily influenced by producer Ed Cobb. One of the few recordings that does accurately represent the Watchband sound is Sweet Young Thing, the first single released under the band's real name (Blues Theme, an instrumental Watchband recording credited to the Hoggs, had been released in 1966 by Hanna-Barbera records).
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Purple Haze
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Purple Haze has one of the most convoluted release histories of any song ever recorded. Originally issued in the UK as a single, it scored high on the British charts. When Reprise got the rights to release the first Hendrix album, Are You Experienced?, they chose to replace the first track on the album with Purple Haze, moving the original opening track, Foxy Lady, to side two of the LP. The song next appeared on the Smash Hits album, which in Europe was on the Polydor label. This was the way things stayed until the early 1990s, when MCA acquired the rights to the Hendrix catalog and re-issued Are You Experienced? with the tracks restored to the UK ordering, but preceded by the six non-album sides (including Purple Haze) that had originally been released prior to the album. Most recently, the Hendrix Family Trust has again changed labels and the US version of Are You Experienced? is once again in print, this time on Sony's Legacy label. This means that Purple Haze (heard here in its original mono mix) has now been released by all three of the world's major record companies. That's right. There are only three major record companies left in the entire world, Sony (which owns Columbia and RCA, among others), Warner Brothers (which owns Elektra, Atlantic, Reprise and others) and Universal (which started off as MCA and now, as the world's largest record company, owns far too many current and former labels to list here). Don't you just love out of control corporate consolidation?
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: It's Breaking Me Up
Source: LP: This Was
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Jethro Tull originally was part of the British blues scene, but even in the early days the band's principal songwriter Ian Anderson made no secret of the fact that he wanted to expand beyond the confines of that particular genre. Ironically, It's Breaking Me Up, from Jethro Tull's first LP, is an Anderson composition that is rooted solidly in the British blues style.
Artist: Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
Title: The Blimp (Mousetrapreplica)
Source: CD: Trout Mask Replica
Writer: Don Van Vliet
Label: Reprise (original label: Straight)
Year: 1969
Wherein the good captain plugs his upcoming hit single (and producer Frank Zappa responds). Ah, if only real advertising could be this entertaining...
Artist: Temptations
Title: Psychedelic Shack
Source: LP: Psychedelic Shack
Writer: Whitfield/Strong
Label: Gordy
Year: 1970
Starting in 1969 the songwriting/production team of Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong began to carve out their own company within a company at Motown, producing a series of recordings with a far more psychedelic feel than anything else coming out of the Motor City's biggest label. The most blatantly obvious example of this is the Temptations tune Psychedelic Shack, which graced the charts in 1970. Whitfield would eventually form his own company, taking another Motown act, the Undisputed Truth, with him, but would not be able to equal the success of the songs he and Strong produced for the Temptations, such as 1972's Papa Was A Rolling Stone.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Still, I'm Sad
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Great Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): McCarty/Samwell-Smith
Label: Epic
Year: 1965
The most influential Yardbirds song on US garage bands, as well as their biggest US hit, was their grunged out version of Bo Diddley's I'm A Man, which hit the top 10 in 1965. The B side of that record was Still I'm Sad, possibly the first rock song to incorporate Gregorian chant. Interestingly enough, Still I'm Sad was released in the UK on the exact same day as in the US, but as the B side to an entirely different tune, Evil Hearted You.
Artist: Haunted
Title: 1-2-5
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Canada on LP: The Haunted)
Writer(s): Burgess/Peter
Label: Rhino (original label: Quality)
Year: 1966
Formed in Montreal in 1964, the Haunted was one of the most popular bands in the Canadian province of Quebec, as well as Southern Ontario. In January of 1966 the band won an eight-hour long battle of the bands, resulting in a contract with Quality Records. The Haunted's first single was a song called 1-2-5, which the label refused to release due to the song's subject matter (a liason with a prostitute). Undaunted, the band changed a few lyrics, substituting lines like "a roomful of clowns" and "a line of executives" for the original references to working girls and re-recorded the song. The label, being somewhat clueless, released the song in its new form, but messed up the band's name on the label, calling them the Hunted. Finally, the band changed labels, issuing the song as an album track on Trans World Records in 1967.
Artist: Janis Ian
Title: Pro-Girl
Source: Mono LP: Janis Ian
Writer(s): Janis Ian
Label: Verve Folkways
Year: 1967
It took guts for a fifteen-year-old to write and record a song that is basically an open letter to a prostitute. It took maturity to do it without either condoning or condemning that kind of life. Janis Ian displayed both with the song Pro-Girl on her 1967 debut LP.
Artist: Grass Roots
Title: Feelings
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Feelings and as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Coonce/Entner/Fukomoto
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
In 1968 the Grass Roots decided to assert themselves and take artistic control of their newest album, Feelings, writing most of the material for the album themselves. Unfortunately for the band, the album, as well as its title track single, fared poorly on the charts. From that point on the Grass Roots were firmly under the control of producers/songwriters Steve Barri and P.F. Sloan, cranking out a series of best-selling hits such as I'd Wait A Million Years and Midnight Confessions (neither of which get played on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era, incidentally).
Artist: Moby Grape
Title: 8:05
Source: LP: Moby Grape
Writer(s): Miller/Stevenson
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Moby Grape was formed out of the ashes of a band called the Frantics, which featured the songwriting team of guitarist Jerry Miller and drummer Don Stevenson. The two continued to write songs together in the new band. One of those was 8:05, one of five songs on the first Moby Grape album to be released simultaneously as singles.
Artist: Youngbloods
Title: Get Together
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: The Youngbloods)
Writer(s): Chet Powers
Label: Rhino (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1967
The Youngbloods, led by transplanted New Yorker Jesse Colin Young, were the second San Francisco band signed to industry leader RCA Victor Records. Their first album was released in 1967 but was overshadowed by the vinyl debuts of the Grateful Dead and Moby Grape, among others. In fact, the Youngbloods toiled in relative obscurity until 1969, when their own version of Dino Valenti's Let's Get Together (from the 1967 LP) was used in a TV ad promoting world peace. The song was subsequently released (with the title slightly shortened) as a single and ended up being the group's only hit record (as well as Valenti's most famous composition, albeit published under his birth name of Chet Powers).
Artist: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title: Good Times
Source: British import CD: Winds Of Change/The Twain Shall Meet
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: BGO (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
By the end of the original Animals' run they were having greater chart success with their singles in the US than in their native UK. That trend continued with the formation of the "new" Animals in 1967 and their first single, When I Was Young. Shortly after the first LP by the band now known as Eric Burdon And The Animals came out, M-G-M decided to release the song San Franciscan Nights as a single to take advantage of the massive youth migration to the city that summer. Meanwhile the band's British label decided to instead issue Good Times, (an autobiographical song which was released in the US as the B side to San Franciscan Nights) as a single, and the band ended up with one of their biggest UK hits ever. Riding the wave of success of Good Times, San Franciscan Nights eventually did get released in the UK and was a hit there as well.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Sing This All Together/Citadel
Source: CD: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer(s): Jagger/Richard
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1967
From the opening piano chord of the first song, Sing This All Together (played by Nicky Hopkins), it is obvious that the late-1967 LP Their Satanic Majesties Request is unlike any Rolling Stones album made before or since. For one thing, the Stones produced the album themselves at a time when their personal and professional lives were spinning out of control. There was also a perceived need to somehow outdo the Beatles, who were, at the time, riding high with their Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. In fact, there are several parallels between the two albums, including similar styled covers, an opening theme song that is repeated later on the album, and a general feel of psychedelic excess. Brian Jones, in particular, plays several instruments on Sing This All Together alone, including brass, saxophone and mellotron (a keyboard instrument that utilized tape loops to produce the desired sounds). In contrast, Citadel, which, like With A Little Help From My Friends, flows directly out of its predecessor, is built around a series of power chords from Keith Richards, and conceivably could have been released as a single in its own right. Although it immediately shot up the album charts, Their Satanic Majesties Request quickly wore out its welcome and has since been all but disavowed by the surviving members of the band.
Artist: Steve Miller Band
Title: Song For Our Ancestors
Source: CD: Sailor
Writer: Steve Miller
Label: Capitol
Year: 1968
Sometime around 1980 someone (I don't recall who) released an album called Songs of the Humpback Whale. It was essentially two LP sides of live recordings of the mammals in their natural habitat (the ocean, duh). This was soon followed by a whole series of albums of natural sounds recorded in high fidelity stereo that went under the name Environments. I wonder if the producers of those albums realized that they were following in the footsteps of San Francisco's Steve Miller Band, who's second LP, Sailor, opens with about a minute of ocean sounds (including whale songs) that serve as an intro to Miller's Song For Our Ancestors.
Artist: Neil Young
Title: I've Been Waiting For You
Source: LP: The 1969 Warner/Reprise Songbook (originally released on LP: Neil Young)
Writer(s): Neil Young
Label: Warner Brothers (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Despite being included on the very first Warner Brothers Loss Leaders album, the 1969 Warner/Reprise Songbook, I've Been Waiting For You, from Neil Young's self-titled 1968 debut LP, is one of the least-known and underated of all of Young's songs...or at least it was until 2002, when David Bowie (with Dave Grohl on guitar) released his own version of the song as a single and included it on the album Heathen.
Artist: Amboy Dukes
Title: Journey To The Center Of The Mind
Source: CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Nugent/Farmer
Label: Priority (original label: Mainstream)
Year: 1968
Detroit was one of the major centers of pop music in the late 60s. In addition to the myriad Motown acts, the area boasted the popular retro-rock&roll band Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the harder rocking Heard (later known as the Bob Seger System), the anarchistic MC5 and their "little brother" band, the Stooges, and Ted Nugent's outfit, the Amboy Dukes, who scored big in 1968 with Journey To The Center Of The Mind.
Artist: Vertacyn Arc Materializer
Title: Natgeo
Source: LP: Tasting The Sea
Writer(s): Vertacyn Arc Materializer
Label: 10 GeV
Year: 2018
The city of San Francisco seems to produce more than its share of bands that go out of their way to maintain their anonymity. In the early 1970s the Residents even recorded an album called Not Available, intending to not release it until all of the band members had forgotten about its existence (it eventually got released in 1978 during a creative dry spell). These days the San Francisco anonymous band torch is carried by Vertacyn Arc Materializer, a band that is just as hard to describe as the Residents themselves. Their second LP, Tasting The Sea, is only available on Vinyl, and it's packaging is nothing less than spectacular. The front cover is the famous Rolling Stones "mouth" logo dissected by an actual zipper, mimicking the Stones' own Sticky Fingers cover, against a stark white background. Opening the zipper reveals a "circle c" copyright symbol. The back cover featuring "portraits" of each of the four band members: the Starbucks logo (bass, guitar), the US $20 bill version of President Andrew Jackson (drums, trumpet), Marilyn (guitar, bass, keyboards) and Homeland Security, represented by a snarling wolf (vocals, keyboards, guitar). There's even more fun stuff on the inside of the gatefold cover, but I'll let you find your own copy to check it out yourself (if you can find one; apparently there were only 500 pressed). Musically, Vertacyn Arc Materializer is harder to describe; I'd put them with bands like Killing Joke and Nine Inch Nails, with a little Pere Ubu thrown in, but even that comparison falls short of the reality of Natgeo, a track that somehow manages to name a check a famous magazine without any discernable sense of context.
Artist: Residents
Title: Loser≅Weed
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): The Residents
Label: Ralph
Year: 1976 (?)/1978
Loser≅Weed is the B side of a single released on translucent gold colored vinyl in 1978. The text on the back of the sleeve of that single claims that the record, featuring an avant-garde version of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, had originally been released in 1976, but knowing the Residents' reputation for deliberately obscuring the truth, I have to take that claim with a grain of salt, since none of my sources have any info regarding a 1976 issue. The sign ≅ that appears between the words "loser" and "weed", incidentally, is known as a congruence, or isomorphic sign, essentially meaning, in this instance, "structurally identical".
Artist: Zim Band
Title: I Can See The Future
Source: CD: Multiverse
Writer(s): Zim
Label: self-published
Year: 2021
The Zim Band is a three-piece outfit operating out of Buffalo and Rochester, NY. Rather than go into it here, I'm going to refer you to their website https://thezimband.com/ while you listen to I Can See The Future from their 2021 CD Multiverse.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: Sparrow
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Wednesday Morning, 3AM)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1964
Sparrow is one of Paul Simon's most memorable tunes from the first Simon And Garfunkel album, Wednesday Morning 3AM. The 1964 album failed to make the charts and was soon deleted from the Columbia catalog. The LP was re-issued in 1966 after producer Tom Wilson added electric instruments to another track from the album, The Sound Of Silence, turning Simon And Garfunkel into household names.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Can't Seem To Make You Mine
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From the Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Sky Saxon
Label: Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year: 1965
The first truly psychedelic record to hit the L.A. airwaves was the Seeds' March 1965 debut single, Can't Seem To Make You Mine. The song was also chosen to lead off the first Seeds album the following year. Indeed, it could be argued that this was the song that first defined the "flower power" sound, predating the Seeds' biggest hit, Pushin' Too Hard, by several months.
Artist: Who
Title: Whiskey Man
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer: John Entwhistle
Label: Decca
Year: 1966
Although the Who had previously issued a pair of singles in the US, the first one to make any kind of waves was Happy Jack, released in late 1966 and hitting its peak the following year. The B side of that record was the song Whiskey Man. Like all the Who songs penned by bassist John Entwhistle, this one has an unusual subject: in this case, psychotic alcohol-induced hallucinations that are more enjoyable than reality.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Thoughts And Words
Source: CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s): Chris Hillman
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
In addition to recording the most commercially successful Dylan cover songs, the Byrds had a wealth of original material over the course of several albums. On their first album, these came primarily from guitarists Gene Clark and Jim (now Roger) McGuinn, with David Crosby emerging as the group's third songwriter on the band's second album. After Clark's departure, bassist Chris Hillman began writing as well, and had three credits as solo songwriter on the group's fourth LP, Younger Than Yesterday. Hillman credits McGuinn, however, for coming up with the distinctive reverse-guitar break midway through Thoughts And Words.
Artist: Jeff Beck Group
Title: All Shook Up
Source: LP: Beck-Ola
Writer(s): Presley/Blackwell
Label: Epic
Year: 1969
On the back cover of the 1969 LP Beck-Ola (the first to be officially credited to the Jeff Beck Group), guitarist Jeff Beck had this to say: "Today, with all the hard competition in the music business, it's almost impossible to come up with anything totally original. So we haven't. However, this LP was made with the accent on heavy music. So sit back and listen and try and decide if you can find a small place in your heads for it." With a lineup that included Rod Stewart on vocals, Ronnie Wood on bass, Nicky Hopkins on keyboards and new member Tony Newman on drums playing songs like Elvis Presley's All Shook Up they definitely succeeded in making "heavy music".
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: Fields of Sun
Source: CD: Heavy
Writer(s): Ingle/DeLoach
Label: Rhino/Atco
Year: 1968
Before In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida there was Heavy. The debut LP from Iron Butterfly featured vocalist/tambourinist Darryl DeLoach, guitarist Danny Weis and bassist Jerry Penrod, all of whom would leave the band after the album was recorded, along with drummer Ron Bushy and keyboardist Doug Ingle, who would find themselves having to recruit two new members before recording the classic In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida album. One of the best-known tracks from Heavy is Fields of Sun, with its Baroque-influenced instrumental bridge played and sung (an octave higher) by Ingle.
Artist: Elastik Band
Title: Spazz
Source: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): David Cortopassi
Label: Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Just plain weird, and probably politically incorrect as well, Spazz was the work of five young men from Belmont, California calling themselves the Elastik Band. For some odd reason, someone at Atco Records thought Spazz might be commercially viable, and released the track as a single in late 1967. They were wrong.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1966
The Electric Prunes biggest hit was I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), released in November of 1966. The record, initially released without much promotion on Reprise Records, was championed by Seattle DJ Pat O'Day of KJR radio, and was already popular in that area when it hit the national charts (thus explaining why so many people assumed the band was from Seattle). I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) has come to be one of the defining songs of the psychedelic era and was the opening track on Lenny Kaye's original Nuggets compilation, released on the Elektra label in 1972.
Artist: Cream
Title: Spoonful
Source: LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released in UK on LP: Fresh Cream)
Writer(s): Willie Dixon
Label: Cotillion (original label: Reaction)
Year: 1966
When the album Fresh Cream was released by Atco in the US it was missing one track that was on the original UK version of the album: the band's original studio version of Willie Dixon's Spoonful. A live version of Spoonful was included on the LP Wheels of Fire, but it wasn't until the 1970 soundtrack album for the movie Homer that the studio version was finally released in the US. Unfortunately the compilers of that album left out the last 15 seconds or so from the original recording.
Artist: Doors
Title: Back Door Man
Source: LP: The Doors
Writer(s): Willie Dixon
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
In their early days as an L.A. club band, the Doors supplemented their growing body of original material with covers of classic blues tunes (rather than covers of top 40 hits like many of their contemporaries). Perhaps best of these was Willie Dixon's Back Door Man, which had been a mid-50s R&B hit for Howlin' Wolf. The Doors themselves certainly thought so, as it was one of only two cover songs on their debut LP.
Artist: Jake Holmes
Title: Dazed And Confused
Source: LP: Nuggets vol. 10-Folk Rock (originally released on LP: The Above Ground Sound Of Jake Holmes)
Writer(s): Jake Holmes
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
On Auguest 5th, 1967 a little known singer/songwriter named Jake Holmes opened for the Yardbirds for a gig in New York City, performing songs from his debut LP The Above Ground Sound Of Jake Holmes, including a rather creepy sounding tune called Dazed And Confused. Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty, who was actually in the audience for Holmes's set, went out and bought a copy of the album the next day. Soon after that the Yardbirds began performing their own modified version of Dazed And Confused. Tower Records, perhaps looking to take advantage of the Yardbirds popularization of the tune, released Dazed And Confused as a single in January of 1968. Meanwhile, the Yardbirds split up, with guitarist Jimmy Page forming a new band called Led Zeppelin. One of the songs Led Zeppelin included on their 1969 debut LP was yet another new arrangement of Dazed And Confused, with new lyrics provided by Page and singer Robert Plant. This version was credited entirely to Page. Holmes himself, not being a fan of British blues-rock, was not aware of any of this at first, and then let things slide until 2010, when he filed a copyright infringement lawsuit. The matter was ultimately settled out of court, and all copies of the first Led Zeppelin album made from 2014 on include "inspired by Jake Holmes" in the credits.
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